     _________   _________   _________   _________   _________   _________
    |  _      | |  _____  | |  _____  | |  _____  | |  _____  | |  ____   |
    | | |     | | |  ___| | | |_   _| | | |_   _| | | |  ___| | | |  _ \  |
    | | |     | | | |___  | |   | |   | |   | |   | | | |___  | | | |_| | |
    | | |     | | |  ___| | |   | |   | |   | |   | | |  ___| | | |    /  |
    | | |___  | | | |___  | |   | |   | |   | |   | | | |___  | | | |\ \  |
    | |_____| | | |_____| | |   |_|   | |   |_|   | | |_____| | | |_| \_\ |
    |_________| |_________|+-----------------------+|_________| |_________|
                           |  P  U  Z  Z  L  E  R  |
                           +-----------------------+

Two very nifty and very different programs this time to keep your type-in
fingers nimble. Letter Puzzler is an interesting variation on a very old game
that can keep you puzzling through to the next issue, while Manuscript could
save any musicians a lot of money! Keep them coming, but don't forget our new
form.

LETTER PUZZLER
Another game this month, but you'll need to use your brains a bit more on this
one. You know those little plastic puzzles where you slide little lettered
tiles around to make words? Well, this brain-taxing type-in gives you the same
kind of puzzle on Arnold - only bigger. Its author, Simon Watson from St.
Austell in Cornwall, wasn't satisfied with the usual 4x4 or 5x5 grid. He went
for a huge 8x8 grid, and that means 63 tiles to get in the right order.
    The program scrambles the tiles in a different order each time you play.
You then have to unscramble them using either the cursor keys or a joystick.
'Up' will move a tile up into the empty space, 'left' will move one left, and
so on. The screen display shows you not only the order the tiles are in now,
but also the order you have to get them into and the time you've taken so far.
    When typing the listing in be sure that you finish line 460 properly. It
ends with a comma, a space and then a second comma. That's about all you need
to know for you to use the program. Now, the sooner you get typing the sooner
you can get puzzling. What are you waiting for?

MODIFYING THE PROGRAM
If you've played the program for a little while, you might like to try making a
few modifications to it. The nice thing about type-ins is that you can usually
alter them without having to be an out-and-out hacker.
    The lines 390-460 hold the data for the words formed by the puzzle. If you
decide to change them, bear in mind that they must all have eight letters and
the last letter of the last word must be a blank. Using numbers, lower case
letters and other symbols, you could make all the tiles different. If you think
this would make the game a lot harder, you're quite right - in fact it would
make the thing impossible roughly half the time. Because of the way the thing
works, you should always duplicate a few of the tiles. If you make the last two
identical, this'll do the trick.
    You may have noticed that you always get the same sequence of puzzles the
first time you use the program after resetting the machine. If you've saved the
program to disk, you'll be able to check this out rather quicker than cassette
users could. This repetition happens because the game doesn't seed the random
number generator - it doesn't have a statement of the form variable =
RND(negative number) anywhere in it, in other words. You'll probably have to
experiment a bit to get this one to work the way you want, though.
    The most obvious modification would be to enlarge the grid - to 12x12, say.
To do this you'll really have to modify the program quite considerably. Aside
from some cosmetic alterations to the graphics, for the most part you'll just
need to replace 8 with 12 throughout. Obviously, not every occurence of the
number 8 is a reference to the grid size - the reference in line 100, for
example, shouldn't be changed.
    Similarly, there are some references to the grid size that don't involve
the number 8. In line 380, 'X% = 7' should be changed to 'X% = 11' for a 12x12
grid. You'll just have to look through the program carefully for this sort of
thing.

[Listing - PUZZLER.BAS]


MANUSCRIPT
Just a little extra for all you music lovers out there, courtesy of Colin
Powell. If you've got a DMP2000 or Epson-compatible printer you can use this
listing to churn out cheap manuscript paper. All you have to do is pop a sheet
of blank A4 paper into the printer, make sure the printer's on-line, and run
the program. How useful it is depends on how much manuscript paper you get
through, but you've got to admit it's a bit different.

[Listing - MANUSCRI.BAS]
